A few years ago, in my old job, I was talking to the marketing team about something. One of them mentioned that she rarely gets sick, but she never lets someth

A few years ago, in my old job, I was talking to the marketing team about something. One of them mentioned that she rarely gets sick, but she never lets something as minor as a cold or flu stop her, and she still comes into work because she's tough. I had a go at her, because I'm asthmatic. Someone brought a cold into my previous job, and I spent six months with the symptoms of it (really). Another time, someone brought a cold in that hit my asthma so bad that I needed a break after rolling over in bed. My doctor nearly hospitalized me over that - apparently my airways were really narrow. The other woman from the marketing team jumped in, explaining that she doesn't usually get the cold, but takes the disease home on her hands and clothes, her young kids pick it up, and then she ends up spending a month off looking after them, using all her vacation time just like you did. After all her kids have been sick with it, she'll get it, and she doesn't have any vacation or sick days left. In the end, it turned out that the hero who never let a "minor illness" get in the way hadn't thought about anybody else catching it.